1.5 Legend Campaign

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LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

1.5 Legend Campaign

Post by LordYanaek »

So i finally decided to start a LW2-1.5 legend campaign rather than a WotC legend. This time i decided to keep track of what i'm doing and i'll be posting some sort of log here in case anyone cares to read it.

Preliminary notes
Game settings :
  • Difficulty : Legend. It will be my first time playing LW2 at that difficulty (played vanilla Legend once).
  • No Ironman because i will reload if some LoS bug kills some guys (i'm fine with loosing someone if i make a mistake, i'm not fine with loosing someone to a bug) and occasionally if i attempt something really experimental for me (i'm not interested in starting all over but i want to be able to test new approaches). I'll try to play honestman at least.
  • I have a couple of mods mostly QoL and UI. The important ones (with gameplay implications) :
    • Peak from Concealment. This one really makes stealth much more enjoyable (and believable). It probably make stealth slightly easier but i disabled the "grace tiles".
    • Free reload anytime and Reliable ever vigilant. I don't really understand why it doesn't work this way by default.
    • Commander's Choice and LW2 A better AWC. Those 2 are special. I rarely use them but i will use them on a few soldiers from my pool to give them their correct class in case they show on Gatecrasher or i have to deploy them before i build the GTS and give them fitting AWC perks. Will mention when i use those.
    • Ini edit to make all AWC perks visible but increase the minimal level to train them. This way i can plan soldiers progression but i won't have OP soldiers early with lucky draws either.
  • Red Fog enabled for everyone. It makes a lot more sense to me, makes every hit point count and makes medics less useless.
  • NCE enabled, but Hidden Potential disabled. I keep the "good" RNG (the one that gives you more options) and throw away the "bad" one (the one that makes a mess of your barrack)
I played 2 LW2 campaigns on commander before, with 1.2 and 1.3-1.4. First one i played a lot of stealth and brute force. Second i played mostly medium GOps and larger ambush squads with 1 stealth squad. I'll try to use all sorts of squads this time, reserving a large one to force my way through under-infiltrated missions Psieye style and also take rapid response missions, at least one stealth squad and a bunch of normal squads for GOps.
I won't post a detailed write up of every mission, it would probably be pretty boring, just the "interesting" missions. I will however post a summary after every supply drop.

First supply drop
Right click and Show Image if it's too small.
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Gatecrasher : Not going into details, it went as smoothly as gatecrasher can go. Flawless and i didn't have to wasted corpses by using explosives. 3 soldiers from my pool decided to show-up.
  • Amar "KB" Tan. If you've read the book, you know him. He never used any special weapon so he can be any class for me. He decided to be an Assault, works for me i'll spec him for Assault Rifle. He will be an officer if he lives long enough as he was in the book.
  • Kathy Chitto. Looks like she's still hanging with Amar. She's a sniper of course so using commander's choice here. She has good aim so bonus point for her.
  • Frida Klein. She's a veteran from my first LW2 campaign. She's been very useful as a snapshot sniper so gained a place in my pool. She was an Assault officer in my second campaign so she can be anything here. She decided to be a Sharpshooter once gain and since she has great mobility she's going to be a snapshotter like her first incarnation.
In the end i had 2 sharpshooters and was missing a Grenadier. I'll get one in the next mission.

Immediately set everyone to Intel and started scanning with Avenger. I didn't built GTS this time, i learned from my previous campaign to not trust mission rewards for my crew so i'll keep my supplies and buy a Scientist and Engineer to start, then depending on rewards i'll by another one next drop cycle.

I quickly detected a mission to escort an Engineer that also rewarded me a PoI for the hunter's weapons. Then i detected a first Smash and Grab. I took a wound during that mission but it's OK. I switched to recruit while those missions were infiltrating and scanned for Black Market. Second batch of scan revealed another mission for an Engineer and a Jailbreak with 3 rebels to free. Another guy was wounded during that jailbreak but otherwise things went quite well.

I also did some research and excavation, contacted New India as it was size 6 and was pleasantly surprised to see it had only 1 Str and got the hunter's weapons PoI. My first haven is size 10 after the Jailbreak.

Op. Dead Man's Thunder
That mission was a bit special. Typical deployment for a Vehicle rescue, i spawn in one corner, the van is in the middle and the evac in the opposite corner :roll: I move to high ground on a building overseeing the street with the van, took me 2 turns to get there and i see a pod of 3 advent guys with an officer patrolling the streets. I try to get into position for an ambush on 3rd turn and notice a second pod (sectoid + trooper) so i decide to wait the next turn and see if i can avoid a double activation. A 3rd pod (sectoid + trooper) comes into vision and joins with the 3 advent guys while the first sectoid pod moves directly towards me without revealing anyone. On my turn i notice the RNF turned yellow and i can't move half of my squad because of the sectoid. :o
I took a better look at my soldiers : infiltration was long and i could bring 6 soldiers including a tech, needle grenadier and gunner. "Screw it", i put a few guys on OW, rocket the 5 clustered guys and hope the grenadier can kill a few of the wounded bad guys. Rookie grenade followed, then my grenadier and finally only the 2 sectoids and officer were left standing and i flahsbanged the officer and 1 sectoid and prayed. The flashbanged and wounded (i'm playing with Red Fog) guys missed me while the last sectoid panicked my tech, i would have preferred a mind control as i still had a flashbang grenade ready. I manged to finish 1 sectoid and the officer, banged the second sectoid and he missed my 6HP+ablative gunner on a flanking shot. He died the next turn while i opened the van for the VIP (and got a nice enemy protocol reward). After that i moved towards evac and noticed some sounds indicating the last patrol was coming from behind me. I never saw them and reached EVAC after disposing of the first RNF wave with a good OW turn without taking a wound.
Glad i had some heavy power on that mission :)

Barracks status
My barrack is once again dominated by ladies, works for me as they tend to survive longer. It doesn't help that i usually add ladies to my pool at the end of campaigns (since they survived unlike the guys :lol: )
I deployed several rookies to train on the field and now have 2 of every class except for Shinobi (i have 3 Sharpshooters due to Chitto being forced into that class). I'll Deploy Allessandra Nishimura on the next mission as i want her to be a Shinobi (she's also from the book). I have only 2 wounded soldiers so i think it's a solid start.
Another soldier from my pool was promoted during those early missions
  • Erica Bell, a veteran from an early campaign. She was a Vanilla Grenadier and have since been a Gunner and Technical in LW2, looks like she likes heavy weapons. I deployed her when the classes available for promotion were the 3 heavy and Shinobi and she didn't disappoint me, she went Grenadier :lol:
2 more soldiers from my pool are waiting for GTS (unless i'm forced to deploy them early and have to rely on Commander's choice).
  • Jane Kelly. You know her, you love her (or not). She carried my first campaign, sometimes on her own, with a lucky Death from Above perk (as a Ranger with a weapon requiring only 1 action to shoot) and she's been present in every campaign. She's already been a sniper and a LW2 ranger twice. I'm still unsure what class i'll train her but she's a shooter at heart, unless she has good Psi offense, i'll see.
  • Angela "Dying Angel" Robertson. She's a personal creation. Suffering from the aftereffects of careless experiments in a Gene Therapy Clinic where she came for a cure to her Diabetes, she's now much faster than before ... and she's dying. With nothing to loose, she's going to be an Assault always in the thick of battles. NCE didn't give her very high speed this time (previous campaign she started at 17) so i'll shamelessly cheat to give her Sprinter.
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: 1.5 Legend Campaign

Post by Psieye »

Let's see, so you got 2 Engineers from missions and presumably you've bought a Scientist by now? When did the 1st Basic Research begin?
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Icarus
Posts: 151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:26 pm

Re: 1.5 Legend Campaign

Post by Icarus »

Out of curiosity: how does DfA work on a Ranger?
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: 1.5 Legend Campaign

Post by LordYanaek »

Psieye wrote:Let's see, so you got 2 Engineers from missions and presumably you've bought a Scientist by now? When did the 1st Basic Research begin?
Sorry, didn't notice your question. Yep, 2 engineers from missions by the end of first supply cycle and a 3rd one i bought (i had decided to buy one Sci and one Eng to get a good early crew and the second eng mission came after i bought one).
As you should be able to see on the timeline, i started Basic Research on 03/10 right after resistance comm and modular weapons. Tell me if the images don't show, i tried saving them as indexed color PNGs for minimal size as i can no longer keep those on my dropbox and have to attach them in the forum. Maybe it's causing issues with some browsers.
Icarus wrote:Out of curiosity: how does DfA work on a Ranger?
On a vanilla ranger you can just keep shooting as long as you keep killing stuff (not too hard in vanilla with a Shotgun). Over the course of the campaign she cleared several pods on her own :lol:

Second Supply drop
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For the research, after basic research i went for Hybrid Material, then Alien Biotech, Sectoid Autopsy (cause i didn't have enough Elerium for Laser) and finally rendered an Elerium core to get to Laser weapons which will be available somewhere mid-april, much sooner than in my previous (Commander) campaign.
I'm excavating like crazy with the 3 engineers (+1 this cycle) i have, bringing supplies that should prove useful to build Laser weapons.

I recruited a second scientist this cycle as missions definitely don't seem to give me any. I also recruited some soldiers (inculding one from BM) as the number of wounded soldiers increased.

Region 2 (New India) started giving me missions, starting with a Jailbreak which is really good as a first mission and then a short-infiltration (around 2 days) Smash and Grab. I was totally unsure if it would be possible to 8-men an underinfiltrated S&G so i saved before sending the squad (i consider this an experiment). Another mission quickly popped in E. Africa [1] for a 4th engineer. Despite having 3 of them i figured another one would come handy at some point so i launched the S&G a little in advance (1 day infiltrated).

Op. Iron Snake (badly underinfiltrated Smash and Grab)
I had 8 guys on that mission 3 sharpshooters, 1 shinobi, 1 grenadier, 1 technical, 1 gunner and 1 sentinel specialist. Not an ideal composition but still something that might be workable. I'm guilty of reloading immediately at T1 when my Shinobi was spotted after her first blue move! First time playing a heavily under-infiltrated mission since 1.2, i had no idea enemy detection was that large.
Anyway, i started on an outcropping. Shinobi revealed a first pod of 4 ADVENT nearby which the snipers (2 snapshotters could move and shoot) and rest of the squad quickly took care of. I was extra careful with my shinobi once i knew how far enemies could detect me and tried to move smart on that elevated position in case something was behind (Peek from Concealment actually allows you to make smart moves when in concealment). I noticed another pod behind : 8 bad guys including a Viper. Ouch.
Everyone moved towards the edge, trying to stay out of sight. Gunner was lagging behind with 11 mobility. I was trying to get into position when they moved and saw me (probably the nest sniper who was on top of a small ruined building). They scampered under the cliff, most of the totally out of sight and not a single one went up where my Specialist was in OW with Sentinel. Oh well, explosives time. Most of my soldiers had 1 frag and the grenadier had 3 (kept the plating). 3 guys under the cliff (including the viper) died from 3 grenades. 1 snapshotter managed to flank and kill another one. Chitto (nest sniper) killed a 5th one. Couldn't do anything about the last 3. Next turns went a bit tense as another pod moved in and yellow-alert shot Chitto from the edge of vision range, badly wounding her and removing her steady.
I don't remember exactly how i disposed of them but i was out of explosives when i finally moved towards the building. I fought the last patrol next to the entrance and my specialist had to disable a turret so i could concentrate on the 4 guys there. The sharpshooters once again proved extremely valuable and the technical flamed the last guy but failed to set him on fire, he shot me in return and hit behind full cover with red fog (-8 defense on that technical didn't help). I thought i was done with the defenses when a last pod came out of the building itself complete with several ADVENT guys and a sectoid who mindspinned my technical from Yellow alert (no idea they could do this). Grenadier froze it. Shinobi finally revealed herself to fleche officer. I managed to kill most them but the turret which came back online shot my gunner (most tanky soldier so she took low cover as there wasn't enough high cover for everyone).
Timer was on 1 turn left when i was finally able to enter the building (ignoring 2 additional turrets). The fastest soldiers went in to recover the 3 closest crates while the rest of the squad moved towards evac. Mission ended with a dash towards evac from those 3 with ADVENT running behind. 17 move shinobi who took the crate farthest from EVAC was the last one to evac but ADVENT never managed to catch her.

3 wounded soldiers, could have been much worse. 3/5 crates recovered. 28 enemies killed. Could have been better. I ended up using the supplies from this mission to recruit 2 soldiers as i was short on personnel so it wasn't all that useful but when the guys have recovered i'll have more soldiers than i would have otherwise so i think in the long run i'm better even thought i'm 1 guy shorter right now.

Op. Sweaty Paramour (Jailbreak)
Started out pretty nicely, get to high ground, kill first pod except one guy who flees as well as lone drone. Try to follow but he has joined another pod so i fall back, pop a smoke and wait in OW. Kill most of second pod without a wound. Move to kill last guy but reveals 3rd pod (incl sectoid). Flash sectoid, wound it, kill the rest. Last drone show up behind me. Destroy it. Assault moves to flank sectoid and craps out a graze (8% chance to graze, 92% to hit or crit) and of course sectoid moves to flank him and crits! Assault down to 1HP. First RNF drops on me. I quiclky take them down and finally get to free the rebels. Several turns of dash towards evac followed as it was a really long map with evac in the opposite corner from my starting position. Fortunately ADVENT soldiers only managed to take 1 shot at a guy in full cover and missed.

Op. Wolf Saga (Rescue Eng.)
Apart from an evac pretty far away, easy peasy mission with 2 snapshotter who took care of most enemies without taking risks. Needle grenadier was there for guy in high cover.

Op. God Knife (Recover Item - Vehicle)
Large map, vehicle is the opposite side from me! Long maps like a constant this campaign, i wonder whether Legend uses larger maps or it's just plain random (un)luck but i don't remember having this in my previous campaign.
Revealed Drone on T2 and destroyed it. Shinobi moves and reveals pod of 3 incl Viper. Everyone moves to high cover while shinobi move on roof to avoid pod and close on objective since i'm not sure i could reach it in time with the entire squad. Viper pod moves towards me and activate. Viper + trooper takes cover near vehicle + gaz station!
Rookie blows gaz station, killing Viper + trooper. Everyone misses flanked Sentry. Calling evac in the middle of the map. Sentry moves to cover and OW.
T5 Shinobi enters vehicle and takes cover behind crate. Squad finally kills Sentry. Drone lurking around.
T6 Shinobi opens crate and hunkers behind it. Squad takes OW position near evac zone. Last pod (officer + 2 stun lancers) comes by the van and spots Shinobi. Drone joins the mess.
T7 everyone moves forward to cover Shinobi's retreat. Ranger damages drone, Gunner throws smoke where shinobi will dash and shinobi avoids OW from stun lancer. Drone falls to OW. Stun lancer dashes and wounds ranger (out for 25 days!), officer marks gunner, second lancer misses shinobi in smoke.
T8 Gunner uses knife to wound stun lancer, wounded ranger takes better cover and finishes it. Both rookies miss flanked lancer in the smoke but shinobi kills it with 2 slashes. Gunner supresses officer who's standing inside the van. Officer misses gunner.
Shinobi fleches officer, staying in cove from strange position next to the van. Gunner again supresses and Shinobi finihses officer next turn.

Op. Cosmic Valley & Op. Choking Fist (Jailbreak)
2 Jailbreaks without much to report except pretty long maps and dashing away from RNFs.

Op. Blessed Whale (Hack train)
Finally a liberation 1 mission, and in my second region which is much better than the first to benefit from the free radio relay. Infiltration wasn't very good with only about 4 days so i ended up boosting that mission with Intel seeing it's an important mission.
T1 moving towards objective, staying hidden behind a house. Solo drone inside house spots my guys, moves out and flanks my shinobi, another drone sees shinobi! Crap, so much for the careful approach.
T2 Shinobi and gunner move next to drone1 to melee but gunner activates Officer+Lancer pod. Lancer takes cover behind opposite wall.
Grenadier moves to cover and blows wall, activating another pod (Officer + Drone) :shock: ! Rookie finish lancer. Gunner + Shinobi kill drone 1. Specialist takes control of drone 2 (phew). Officer 1 marks gunner and throws grenade (i had forgotten they could do this from the start), wounding gunner + shinobi. Officer 2 scratches my drone. Drone 3 stuns grenadier.
T3 Rookie flanks officer 1 and wound it shinobi fleche to finish. Drone stuns officer 2. Gunner (knife) + specialist kill drone 3.
T4+ last officer dies. Everyone moves towards objective (killing still hacked drone - got my loot thanks for the patch). Last pod shows up and eats OW shots. Specialist flanks sentry and finish it. Shinobi fleches officer and finish it. Hacked objective on last turn due to crappy LoS inside trains and evaced after disposing of first RNF. Only one soldier really suffering from wounds thanks to Field Surgeon.

2nd supply cycle summary
In the end i think it was a pretty good second cycle. Started liberation for my second region. Grew both havens pretty large, got a bunch of new soldiers. I'm a little worried the wounded soldiers will make things harder next cycle but i should still be able to deploy 3 squads at once which isn't bad that early. I'll get Laser pretty soon and supplies/elerium from excavations to build them. Still only 2 sci thought as i didn't get any from missions (seen this before).
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: 1.5 Legend Campaign

Post by Psieye »

Ah, the font was small and I assumed that chart was only for the missions. I see it also charts your other activities too.
LordYanaek wrote: 3 wounded soldiers, could have been much worse. 3/5 crates recovered. 28 enemies killed. Could have been better. I ended up using the supplies from this mission to recruit 2 soldiers as i was short on personnel so it wasn't all that useful but when the guys have recovered i'll have more soldiers than i would have otherwise so i think in the long run i'm better even thought i'm 1 guy shorter right now.
8 soldiers just got mission EXP for 28 kills. 5 of them are even available for immediate re-deployment. Even 1 crate counts as a success for S&G so I'd say you made a good call on brute forcing through that one. Snipers in particular want to hit Sgt ASAP.

Oh and yes, Peek from Concealment does weird things at really long detection range. The mod compensates for the OP "don't get revealed when peeking" by increasing detection range. This means it's practically at sight range with under-infiltration unless you have Covert.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: 1.5 Legend Campaign

Post by Jacke »

Psieye wrote:Oh and yes, Peek from Concealment does weird things at really long detection range. The mod compensates for the OP "don't get revealed when peeking" by increasing detection range. This means it's practically at sight range with under-infiltration unless you have Covert.
From the Peek From Concealment mod page text:
  • You cannot be revealed by an enemy if you have high cover against it, or low cover with elevation (eg. on a rooftop)
  • Movement is slightly more forgiving. If the start and end of your move are hidden, you won't be revealed unless you are visible on at least 3 tiles of your movement path.
  • In exchange for these bonuses, enemy detection ranges have been buffed slightly, making open areas and roads a bit more dangerous.
When I played LW2 1.5 with PFC, the middle bonus, not being spotted if moving soldier only passes through only 2 tiles of visibility if the beginning and ending aren't visible, wasn't working. The third point, the boost to enemy detection ranges, is set in an INI in the mod. So I zeroed that out, as the first bonus just makes sense and should be stock.
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